1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the acquisition of research and development expertise, personnel, facilities, and resources through the use of requests for proposal.
2. Background
In the non-profit and government sector, matching research and development (R&D) needs with the personnel and organizations able to deliver such R&D solutions and resources traditionally involves the following multi-step procurement process: (1) a suitable request for proposal (RFP) is created to identify the research and development needs; (2) the RFP is advertised publicly and broadly to attract research and development providers; (3) interested research and development providers submit proposals, or bids, on fulfilling the needs; (4) the submitted proposals are evaluated based on published criteria; and (5) one or more proposals are selected for funding.
For a number of reasons, this traditional procurement process is problematic for use in the private sector. If an R&D buyer (hereinafter to mean any individual or organization interested in acquiring R&D expertise, personnel, facilities or resources) in the private sector were to use an RFP in the conventional way, the public distribution of the RFP tends to inform the entire R&D community as to which R&D buyers are interested in what types of R&D. Furthermore, the detailed information in an RFP can make the specifics of innovative technology and/or science known to the entire R&D community. Thus, a private entity's business strategy and intellectual property can be made vulnerable by the traditional procurement process. Further, the fear of competition inhibits the information flow inherent in and critical to the proper execution of the traditional procurement process.
Likewise, R&D suppliers (hereinafter to mean any individual or organization interested in providing R&D expertise, personnel, facilities or resources) not only have no assurance that the effort and costs associated with developing a proposal in response to the RFP will be rewarded by a private sector R&D buyer, but the ideas and solutions presented in an R&D supplier's proposal can themselves be valuable intellectual property to the R&D supplier that would be made vulnerable by disclosure. Because of the difficulty in identifying qualified R&D suppliers, the difficulty of publicly advertising R&D buyer needs, and that the intellectual property of both R&D buyers and suppliers can be made vulnerable through mutual, unprotected disclosures, the traditional procurement process has not and cannot be used in the private sector and the state of the private sector R&D community is one of a community with fragmented R&D buyers and suppliers.
Public and government agencies, such as the Whitaker Foundation and the National Science Foundation, facilitate the operation of the traditional procurement process by providing an interface to the R&D community (in the case of the government, for example, by publishing in the Commerce Business Daily or CBD), matching R&D suppliers with public and government R&D needs. However, companies in the private sector do not have such a public and broadly referenced interface to facilitate matching R&D needs and sources. Further, the requirements for matching private sector R&D buyers with R&D suppliers can be more varied and complex than those involved in the public sector. As a result, companies in the private sector are disadvantaged financially and logistically in acquiring external R&D and leveraging internal R&D.
Because of these reasons and the lack of any standards or metrics for R&D quality, the private sector's search and acquisition of R&D resources is typically inefficient, time-consuming and ad hoc.